The Medium

The Medium, a fixed-camera horror title built around a dual-reality mechanic, runs at a 94.5 FPS average at 1080p Low settings on the AMD Ryzen 5 2600 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 combo. The data shows that the RTX 5070 is the dominant component in this pairing, delivering smooth performance at lower resolutions and settings, but the combo falls to a 36.5 FPS average at 4K Ultra, indicating a steep performance cliff that shifts the bottleneck profile as resolution increases.

Resolution Scaling

Resolution scaling behavior reveals a GPU-bound setup at 4K, with the CPU becoming less relevant as pixel count rises. From 1080p to 1440p, the average FPS drop is modest: at High settings, the combo goes from 68 FPS at 1920x1080 to 63.9 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of roughly 6%. The Low preset shows a slightly larger absolute drop, from 94.5 FPS to 86.6 FPS, about 8.4% lower. This relatively small penalty when moving from Full HD to QHD suggests that the RTX 5070 has enough headroom to absorb the extra pixel workload without collapsing.

The picture changes dramatically when scaling to 4K. At 3840x2160 High, the average FPS falls to 46, which is 28% below the 1440p High result. The Medium preset tells a similar story: 73.8 FPS at 1440p drops to 70 FPS at 4K, but the Low preset shows a steeper decline, from 86.6 FPS down to 82 FPS. The Ultra preset is the most punishing, plummeting from 45.5 FPS at 1440p to 36.5 FPS at 4K, a 19.8% reduction. These numbers confirm that the limiting component at 4K is the GPU’s raw throughput, as the Ryzen 5 2600’s six cores and twelve threads are not being stressed by the higher resolution.

The scaling pattern also indicates that the 1080p results are not fully CPU-bound, since the FPS differences between settings remain consistent. At 1080p, the gap between Low and Ultra is 35.5 FPS (94.5 vs 59), which is nearly identical to the 4K gap of 45.5 FPS (82 vs 36.5). This suggests the CPU is not the primary constraint even at the lowest resolution, and the RTX 5070’s 12 GB of GDDR7 memory and 672.0 GB/s bandwidth are sufficient to feed the frame buffer across all tested configurations.

GPU Role

The RTX 5070’s memory subsystem is a key factor in these results. The card features 12 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 192-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 672.0 GB/s. In a game like The Medium, which renders two simultaneous worlds on screen, this bandwidth is critical for streaming textures and geometry. The measured FPS at 4K Medium (70) versus 4K High (46) shows a 24 FPS difference, which is a 34.3% improvement when dropping one preset level. This gap is larger than the corresponding 1080p difference (77.5 vs 68, a 12.3% improvement), indicating that the GPU’s memory bandwidth is more heavily taxed at higher resolutions.

Clock speeds for the RTX 5070 are listed with a base of 2325 MHz and a boost of 2512 MHz. The benchmark results do not isolate clock behavior, but the sustained performance across settings implies the boost clock is being maintained under load. The card’s FP32 throughput of 30.87 TFLOPS and pixel rate of 201.0 GPixel/s are consistent with the observed 4K Low result of 82 FPS, which is still far above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. The RTX 5070’s 80 ROPs and 192 TMUs provide sufficient texture and pixel processing for the game’s fixed-camera scenes, which are less demanding than open-world titles.

The GPU’s benchmark percentile of 83 versus all GPUs places it in the upper tier, and its average benchmark score of 41687 is within 0.6% of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090’s score, which is listed as a nearest rival with a deltaPct of 0.6. This comparison is useful context: the RTX 5070 delivers modern architecture benefits, but the measured FPS in The Medium at 4K Ultra (36.5) is still below playable thresholds, indicating that the game’s highest preset demands more than this card can provide at that resolution.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows point to the Medium preset as the best balance for most scenarios. At 1080p Medium, the combo achieves 77.5 FPS, which is comfortably above 60 and only 17 FPS below the Low preset’s 94.5 FPS. At 1440p Medium, the result is 73.8 FPS, still smooth and only 12.8 FPS below the Low preset’s 86.6 FPS. Even at 4K Medium, the FPS holds at 70, which is playable for a horror game that does not require competitive reaction times. This consistency across resolutions makes Medium the sweet spot.

The High preset is acceptable at 1080p (68 FPS) and 1440p (63.9 FPS), but falls to 46 FPS at 4K, which is below the 60 FPS target. The Ultra preset is only viable at 1080p, where it hits 59 FPS, but this is marginal and drops to 45.5 FPS at 1440p and 36.5 FPS at 4K. The Low preset offers the highest frame rates, but the visual quality degradation is unnecessary given that Medium provides playable performance at all resolutions. For users with a 1440p monitor, Medium is the recommended starting point, with High as an option if the user prioritizes visuals over the 10 FPS difference.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers a range from 59 FPS at Ultra to 94.5 FPS at Low. The Medium preset records 77.5 FPS, and High sits at 68 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 35.5 FPS, which shows the GPU’s scaling is not linear across presets; the step from High to Ultra costs 9 FPS, while the step from Medium to High costs 9.5 FPS.

At 2560x1440, the results are 86.6 FPS at Low, 73.8 FPS at Medium, 63.9 FPS at High, and 45.5 FPS at Ultra. The drop from Medium to High is 9.9 FPS, while the drop from High to Ultra is 18.4 FPS, indicating that the Ultra preset introduces a disproportionately heavy load. This is likely due to increased shadow and reflection calculations that stress the GPU’s compute units.

At 3840x2160, the average FPS values are 82 at Low, 70 at Medium, 46 at High, and 36.5 at Ultra. The gap between Low and Medium is 12 FPS, but the gap between Medium and High is 24 FPS, which is the largest single-preset jump in the entire dataset. This suggests that the High preset at 4K triggers a significant increase in memory bandwidth usage, pushing the RTX 5070’s 672.0 GB/s bandwidth to its limit.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo ranks 632 out of 1689 tested combinations in The Medium, placing it in the top 37.4% of all configurations. This percentile is driven primarily by the RTX 5070’s strong absolute performance, as the GPU’s individual percentile is 83, while the Ryzen 5 2600’s percentile is 77. The rank reflects that the CPU is not a limiting factor in most scenarios, but the 4K Ultra result of 36.5 FPS prevents the combo from climbing higher, as many competing configurations with newer CPUs likely achieve better minimum frame rates.

Compared to the GPU’s nearest rivals, the RTX 5070’s average benchmark score of 41687 is 0.2% higher than the AMD Radeon Pro 5300 and 0.5% lower than the NVIDIA Tesla M40. These deltas are negligible, but in-game performance may differ. The combo’s rank of 632 suggests that the Ryzen 5 2600’s older Zen architecture is not a serious handicap, as the CPU’s Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 11186 and single-core score of 1579 are sufficient for this game’s fixed-camera scenes.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in The Medium?

A: The data shows 1440p Medium provides 73.8 FPS, which is smooth and only 12.8 FPS below the 1080p Low result of 86.6 FPS. At 4K Medium, the FPS drops to 70, which is still playable but with less headroom.

Q: Why does the FPS drop so much from Medium to High at 4K?

A: At 3840x2160, the average FPS falls from 70 at Medium to 46 at High, a 24 FPS difference. This is the largest preset gap in the dataset, indicating the High preset significantly increases GPU resource demands, likely related to the card’s 672.0 GB/s memory bandwidth being saturated.

Q: Is the Ryzen 5 2600 holding back the RTX 5070?

A: The CPU’s Cinebench R20 single-core score is 663 and multi-core is 4698, which are modest, but the 1080p Low result of 94.5 FPS suggests the CPU is not the primary limiter. The bottlenecks appear at higher resolutions, where the GPU workload dominates.

Q: Can this combo handle 4K gaming?

A: At 4K Low, the average FPS is 82, and at 4K Medium it is 70. These are playable. However, at 4K High the FPS drops to 46, and at Ultra it falls to 36.5, so 4K is only viable on lower presets.

Q: How does the RTX 5070 compare to its nearest rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The GPU’s average benchmark score is 41687, which is 0.6% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (score 41441) and 0.2% higher than the AMD Radeon Pro 5300 (score 41610). These are close margins, but the RTX 5070’s newer architecture may yield different in-game behavior.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded in the data?

A: The lowest average FPS across all measured rows is 36.5, which occurs at 3840x2160 Ultra settings. The highest is 94.5 at 1920x1080 Low settings.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 2600 is a 6-core, 12-thread processor from the 2000 series, based on the Zen architecture with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 3.90 GHz. Its performance in synthetic benchmarks is adequate for this game: Cinebench R23 multi-core scores 11186, and single-core scores 1579. The CPU’s percentile versus all CPUs is 77, which indicates it outperforms a majority of processors, but it is not a top-tier part. In The Medium, the CPU’s role is to manage the game’s fixed-camera scenes and the dual-reality rendering logic, which does not appear to require high thread counts, as the FPS scaling from 1080p to 1440p is modest.

The nearest rival data for the CPU shows it is closely matched with the Intel Core i5-1345U (deltaPct of -0.4) and the AMD Ryzen 5 7530U (deltaPct of 0.6). These deltas are within 1%, meaning the Ryzen 5 2600 offers comparable compute performance to these newer mobile parts, but the desktop platform provides more consistent power delivery. The CPU’s 16 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel DDR4 memory support are sufficient for The Medium’s data streaming, as the measured FPS does not show stutter-inducing drops that would indicate memory bandwidth issues.

The 12 nm process node and 4,800 million transistors are older technology, but the benchmark results confirm that the CPU is not the primary bottleneck in this combo. The evidence is the 4K Medium result of 70 FPS, which is only 7.5 FPS lower than the 1080p Medium result of 77.5 FPS. If the CPU were limiting, the FPS would remain constant regardless of resolution, but the data shows clear resolution-based scaling, meaning the RTX 5070 is doing the heavy lifting. The CPU’s TDP of 65 W and socket AM4 compatibility are relevant for system builders, but the performance data is the key takeaway: this older CPU does not prevent the RTX 5070 from delivering playable frame rates in The Medium at most settings.